


Lying

by eeveestho



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: F/M, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2018-03-06 07:58:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3127010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eeveestho/pseuds/eeveestho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tsukishima made a policy of brutal honesty, but there was one time where Yamaguchi didn't believe him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lying

Yamaguchi knew, maybe better than anyone else, how deeply Tsukishima had been affected by the realization that his older brother, Akiteru, had been lying to him about being part of the Karasuno volleyball team. Yamaguchi had to watch her best friend change from boisterous and proud to sullen, quiet, and distrustful after that incident. Ever since then, if there was one thing Tsukishima hated in this world, it was lies.

He came off as quite abrasive and sarcastic to other people, she knew. But that was part of his policy of honesty, no matter how brutal.

“Don’t you think that was a little mean, Tsukki?” she had asked, back when they were in middle school. Tsukishima had rejected a girl who asked him out, without a single word of emotional padding. Just a flat ‘no, I don’t want to date you’. Tears had welled up in her eyes, and she had run away crying from the two of them.

“Is it mean?” Tsukishima had asked, his gaze set upon the tips of his shoes as they began to walk home. “I don’t want to date her. How is that mean?”

She had frowned at him. “You could’ve said it a bit... more nicely.”

“Isn’t that just another form of lying?” he asked, scowling. “What’s the point in giving her hope, just to crush it later?”

His brutal frankness in all matters had pushed many people away throughout the years. Tsukishima refused to pad his words with white lies even slightly.

Yamaguchi couldn’t blame him. They both knew how white lies could grow, how they could mutate and become dire, how they could completely swallow up the good intentions and kindness that created them in the first place.

In turn, she never lied to her best friend. It was a hard habit to break, especially at first. She was used to the word padding, to breaking things gently and to omitting truths for the sake of sparing hurt feelings. Yamaguchi was essentially a people pleaser, and a bruised ego was a sure way to make people mad at you. With the few people who actually talked to her, she couldn’t afford to make anyone mad.

Tsukishima didn’t get mad at her when she used soft words towards him, but he was happier when she was blunt and honest. And... well, she was happier when he was happier.

Although brutal, sometimes vaguely hurtful honesty was common with Tsukishima, Yamaguchi dealt with it fairly well... because it only meant that there was no wondering at double meanings or false praise.

It meant that when Tsukishima did compliment her, he truly, sincerely meant it.

Not that he was particularly prone to giving these compliments. He was fairly quiet, even with her, and there would be evenings when the two of them would speak less than a dozen words to each other, despite hanging out for hours. Empty words to fill empty air wasn’t a thing Tsukishima did.

But when he did happen to compliment her...

It could be the smallest thing. Complimenting her on her hair. Saying how impressive her test scores were. Noting how much her serve had improved, how she had really become a fearsome and important part of the volleyball team.

Words that, if they came from anyone else, would merely make her smile. When they came from Tsukishima though, it was like a torrent of joy was unleashed inside of her, warming her from her cheeks down to her toes. It was like an oasis in a desert, and she craved it, its scarcity only increasing its luster.

There was only one time, since the Akiteru incident, that Yamaguchi ever questioned, even once, if she was being deceived by her dishonesty-hating best friend.

It was March 14th, White Day, when boys would give chocolate back to the girls who had given them chocolate one month before on Valentines Day. The air was humming with nervous energy, packs of girls clustered together in the hallways bursting into giggles whenever a boy happened to glance in their general direction. More than a few new couples would be formed today. More than a few hearts would be broken too.

One month prior, Yamaguchi had naturally passed out chocolates to all of her teammates on the volleyball team. Most of them were simply friendly, obligation chocolates. Only one had any sort of real feelings attached to them.

“Here, Tsukki,” she said, smiling and holding out a pink wrapped box to her best friend and secret crush. “Happy Valentines Day. I made some chocolate for you.”

“Ah, thanks, Yamaguchi,” he said, taking the box with the barest trace of a smile. “Can I try some now?”

“Yes, please,” she said immediately.

Truth be told, Tsukishima’s chocolates were a bit... special. She had made two batches of Valentines Day chocolates: one was little volleyballs, drops of white chocolate iced with thin, careful lines of black icing to imitate the stitching of a volleyball. Those were for her teammates. And the other batch...

“Yamaguchi,” Tsukishima said, looking inside the box with wide eyes. “Did you...?”

“Yes,” she gushed, grinning at him. “I made you dinosaur chocolates. Sorry if they’re not strictly anatomically correct, Tsukki, I tried really hard...”

“You made me dinosaur chocolates,” he said wonderingly. He picked up a stegasaurus out of the box -- that one had been particularly tricky, with the back spikes, making it not look just lumpy -- and looked at her. “I don’t... want to eat these. They’re too good.”

Pride bubbled up in her chest, hot and wonderful. “I made them for you to eat!” she said, grinning. “They taste just as good as they look. It would be a waste if you didn’t eat them.”

With some hesitancy, he bit the stegasaurus in half. His eyes went even wider, positively saucerlike now.

“Good?” she asked.

He nodded mutely, his mouth full of chocolate. After he swallowed, he said, “Thank you, Yamaguchi. This is incredible.”

She beamed at him. “No problem, Tsukki!!”

And now, one month later, she sat at her desk, bent arm propping up her head, gazing at the clock. There were 5 minutes left until the final dismissal bell, and she hadn’t gotten so much as a lollipop from Tsukishima.

Not that she particularly needed candy to know that he liked her back... as friends, of course. She had presented it as obligation chocolate; it wasn’t unlike him to not give any back, not wanting to misrepresent his feelings for her as anything but platonic.

But still. _Something_ would have been nice. She had spent a long time on those dinosaurs. Did he even remember?

Today, there was no volleyball practice to attend. The two of them walked home together after school, as they always did. Most of the time when they walked home, Tsukishima would listen to music on his headphones, needing to decompress from the anxiety of the day. But today, his headphones were off, nestled around his neck. They still walked in comfortable silence, though, their matching bags bumping occasionally as they walked.

“Did you give out any chocolates today, Tsukki?” Yamaguchi asked, glancing over at him.

Tsukishima glanced over to meet her gaze, eyebrows rising with surprise. “No, why would I?”

“Because it’s White Day!” There was no way he had forgotten. Tanaka and Nishinoya had been talking for a solid week about what to get Kiyoko in return for her (explicitly obligation) chocolates. “Didn’t you get a few chocolates from girls on Valentines Day?”

“Oh.” He turned back to look ahead at the sidewalk. “No, I don’t like any of them.”

“Oh, okay.” Her heart turned cold. She was one of those girls... But, she had expected this. It wasn’t like it was a surprise. How could she be disappointed at something so obvious?

Tsukishima had invited her over a week ago to watch a new documentary on orca whales that was airing today. He had been very excited about it, almost grinning at Daichi when he told them there would be no practice on White Day. Nature documentaries were their Thing: whenever a new one would come out, they would make a day of it. Even when there weren’t any new ones, they would watch old ones.

“Do you want any snacks, Yamaguchi?” Tsukishima asked, as they toed off their shoes in the entrance way.

“Sure, Tsukki!” she chirped. It was almost a rhetorical question, at this point. They were both teenagers who seemed to keep growing in height and they played sports; they were _always_ hungry.

They went into the kitchen, where Yamaguchi went to the cupboard to pull out two glasses -- cola for her, iced tea for Tsukki -- and when she turned around, her best friend had pulled a red, gift-wrapped box out of the fridge. He had set it on the counter, and he was looking at her with a strange expression.

“Wh... what’s that?” she asked, staring at the box. Her heart was suddenly beating very fast.

“I didn’t give chocolates to any other girls today,” he said quietly, “But I did make something for you.”

Yamaguchi walked over, heart still hammering in her chest, to the counter where the box sat. She glanced up at him, asking permission with her eyes. A shadow of a smile passed across his face, gone as quick as it came, and he nodded.

She reached out and carefully lifted the lid off the top of the box. And then, she stopped breathing.

Inside was the most beautiful, spectacular cake she had ever seen. It was a round cake, nothing too fancy, but the beauty was in the decoration. It was iced in royal blues and purples and navy blues, all swirling together into a Van Gogh-esque night sky. There were carefully applied star sprinkles laid out on the blanket of icing, connected together by thin pipes of white icing, marking out a full star map of the northern hemisphere. It even began to extend into the edges of the southern hemisphere, curving around the edge of the cake and along the sides.

If Yamaguchi had the ability to speak, she would tell Tsukishima how incredible it was, how impressed and surprised and touched she was. But all she could do was stare at the cake and stare at him, her mouth agape with shock.

“You like it?” he asked quietly, almost shyly.

“I... I love it, Tsukki,” she said breathlessly, incredulous that he could even ask. “This is... I can’t believe...”

“Sorry if the constellations are a little off,” he said, the tips of his ears starting to turn red as he glanced off to the side. “It was hard to place the sprinkles in the right place, and I think it shifted a bit when I put it in the box...”

“No, it’s perfect, it’s so perfect,” she said, cutting his self-deprecation off. She looked up at him, her heart in her throat, not daring to believe what she thought this meant.

He would tell her if she was right. He would never lie to her.

“Tsukki, I thought you said you didn’t do White Day,” she said, her voice trembling. “I thought you said you didn’t want to... to give the wrong impression. To make girls think that you liked them.”

“I don’t,” he said, with a simple shrug. “But in this case... it’s not the wrong impression.”

His words echoed through her mind, repeating again and again. She must have misunderstood. She couldn’t be hearing him right. This was just another delusion, another example of Yamaguchi reading too far into insignificant things.

When she just kept staring mutely at Tsukishima, he let out an irritated sigh. “I like you, okay? As... you know.” He let the implication dangle, his ears now fiery red.

“You’re lying,” she said instantly, even though she knew that the sun would sooner fall out of the sky.

“Excuse me?” The affronted, disgruntled expression that came onto his face made her choke out a laugh, and it was like the crack in her emotional dam. Tears began to well in her eyes, blurring her vision and making Tsukishima look like a blonde smudge.

“I mean... I know you don’t lie,” she said, half-laughing at the ridiculous expression, half-sobbing at her own churning emotions. “But... you’re lying, Tsukki. You have to be. I don’t... I don’t get good things... like you.”

She heard, rather than saw, him sigh, and as she squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed at her wet eyes, she felt a familiar pair of arms wrap around her in a hug. “Of course you do,” he murmured, his chest vibrating against her own. “You deserve everything in the world... Even me, I guess. If you want me.”

Yamaguchi let out a sob and nodded mutely and furiously into the shoulder of his uniform jacket, her hands reaching out to grab at the black fabric, pulling him closer, anchoring herself in him.

After she dried her eyes and managed to stop hiccuping with sobs, they took slices of the celestial cake and their usual drinks and went to watch the whale documentary in Tsukishima’s room. It was familiar. Nothing had really changed. They still sat in their usual spots (Tsukishima lying on his side on his bed, Yamaguchi sitting on the floor in front of the bed), drinking their usual drinks, to the usual familiar drone of the documentary narrator.

And yet, she thought as she took her first bite of the star cake, Tsukishima’s hand idly carding through her hair as it often did, everything had changed.

“Does it taste good?” he asked, the tips of his fingers massaging gently at her scalp. “Do you like it?”

With a smile, without a hint of a lie, she replied, “Yes.”


End file.
